One King's Way

Chapter Two

The strong smell of sawdust and wood chips filled the air as Shef and his companions, rested now from the long ride from Winchester, strolled down to the keelyard. Although the sun had not long cleared the eastern horizon, hundreds of men were already working—leading up great carts loaded with wood and drawn by patient oxen, clustered round forges, bustling in and out of rope-walks. The noise of hammers and saws came from all directions, mixed with the furious voices of gang foremen: but no whip-cracks, no cries of pain, no iron slave-collars.

Brand whistled slowly and shook his head as he surveyed the scene. Only just released from his sick-bed, he was still carefully watched by his physician, the diminutive Hund. Until now he had seen none of what had been achieved over the long winter. And indeed, even Shef, who had driven the work on in person or by deputy every single day, found it hard to credit. It was as if he had released a torrent of energy rather than creating it. Again and again over the winter he had found his wishes anticipated.

After the fighting had ceased last year he had found himself with the resources and wealth of a kingdom to command. His first and most urgent task had been to ensure the defense of his precarious realm. He issued the orders and his commanders applied themselves eagerly—building war machines and training their users, recruiting troops, mixing his potentially refractory groups of freed slaves, Vikings of the Way, and English thanes performing military service in return for their leases of land. This accomplished he had set himself to his second task; to ensure the royal revenues. The job of recording all details of land and tolls, debts and taxes, till then carried on by custom and memory, he had passed on to the priest Boniface. With instructions to do in all the counties Shef now controlled what he had begun in Norfolk alone. It would take time and skill, but the results had already become visible.

The third task, though, was Shef's alone: and that was to build a navy. If there was one thing that was clear, it was that all the battles of the previous two years had been fought on English soil and paid for with English lives. The way to ensure defense, Shef had seen, was to stop the attackers, and especially the Vikings outside the Way, in the place where they reigned supreme: at sea. Supported by the accumulated wealth and taxes of East Anglia and East Mercia as well, Shef had started immediately to build a fleet.

He had had much help and experience to draw on. The Vikings of the Way contained many skilled shipwrights, quite ready to pass on their knowledge and skills if properly rewarded. Thorvin and his fellow-priests of the Way, immensely interested, had plunged into the work as if they had asked nothing better all their lives—as indeed was true. Conforming to their code of forever seeking for new knowledge and supporting themselves and their religion by their working skills alone. Smiths, carpenters, hauliers, poured from all over eastern England to the site Shef had chosen for his dock, on the north bank of the Thames. It lay within his own dominions but facing those of King Alfred, poised to guard—or to threaten—both the Channel and the North Sea, a short distance downriver from the commercial port of London, at the tiny hamlet of Creekmouth.

The problem had been direction. Holding all these skilled and experienced men to the plan Shef had formed, but which directly contradicted much of their life-times' collective experience. At first Shef had asked Thorvin to direct the site, but he had refused, saying he must be free to leave at any time if the demands of his faith required it. Then he had thought of Udd, the ex-slave who had, almost single-handed, invented the crossbow and made safe the torsion catapult. Thus—to some eyes—defeating both Ivar Ragnarsson, Champion of the North, and weeks later Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, at what men were coming to call the Battle of Hastings, 866.

Udd had been a disaster, soon replaced. Left to himself it transpired that the little man was only capable of taking an interest in things made of metal. He also could not direct so much as the boy who blew the bellows, from constitutional shyness. He had been removed and set to the much more congenial task of finding out everything that could be discovered about steel.

As confusion grew, Shef had had to think over his true needs: a man used to the sea and ships, used to organizing the work of others, but not so independent as to alter Shef's orders or so conservative as to fail to understand them. Shef knew few people. The only one of those who seemed even possible was the fisherman-reeve of Bridlington, Ordlaf, whose capture of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks two summers before had unleashed the fury on England. He it was, now, who turned to greet Shef's party.

Shef waited for him to kneel and rise. Early attempts to do away with the formal code of respect had foundered on the looks of hurt and uncertainty of Shef's thanes.

“I brought someone to see the work, Ordlaf. This is my friend and one-time captain, Viga-Brand. He comes from Halogaland, far, far in the North, and has sailed more miles than most men. I want his opinion of the new ships.”

Ordlaf grinned. “He'll see much to stretch his eyes at, lord, however far he's sailed. Things no one has seen before.”

“Truth—right there is a thing that I have not seen before,” said Brand. He waved at a pit a few yards off. Inside it was a man pulling one end of a six-foot saw. Another stood on the huge log above pulling on the other. Ready hands held the plank as they sawed it from the log.

“How does it work? I have only ever seen planks hewed out with adzes.”

“Me too, till I came here,” said Ordlaf. “The secret lies in two things. Better teeth on the saws—that is the work of Master Udd. And teaching these blockheads here”—the men looked up grinning—“not to push the saw, just take turns pulling it. Saves a lot of wood and a lot of work,” he added in a normal voice. The plank eased to the ground, caught by helpers and the two sawyers changed places, the one beneath shaking dust and shavings from his hair. Shef noticed as they changed over that one wore round his neck the Hammer of Thor, as did most of the workmen on the site, the other an almost indistinguishable Christian cross.

“But that's nothing, sir,” Ordlaf went on to Brand. “What the king really wants you to see are his pride and joy, the ten ships we're building to his design. And one of them, lord, now ready for your inspection, finished while you were in Winchester. Come and see.”

He led them through the gate of a stout palisade to a ring of jetties projecting out into a still backwater of the river. There in front of them lay ten ships, men working on all of them, but one, the nearest, evidently complete.

“Now, sir Brand. Did you ever see anything like that this side of Halogaland?”

Brand stared, considering. Slowly he shook his head. “It is a big one, right enough. They say the biggest oceangoing ship in the world is Sigurth Snake-eye's own Frani Ormr, the Shining Worm, that rows fifty oars. This is as big. All these ships are as big.”

Doubt clouded his eyes. “What are the keels made of? Have you taken two trunks and joined them? If you have, well, maybe on a river or off the coast in fair weather, but for deep sea or long voyage—”

“All single trunks,” said Ordlaf. “What you may be forgetting, sir, if you don't mind me saying so, is that up there in the North where you come from you have to work with the wood you can get. And while I can see men grow big enough up there, it isn't the same for trees. What we got here is English oak. And say what they like, I've never seen better wood or bigger wood.”

Brand stared again, shook his head again. “Well and good. But what in Hel have you done to the mast? You've—you've put it in the wrong place. And raked forward like a—like an eighteen-year-old's prick! How is that going to shift a ship that size?” Honest pain filled his voice. Both Shef and Ordlaf grinned broadly. This time Shef took up the tale.

“The whole idea of these ships, Brand, is that they have only one purpose. Not crossing the ocean, not carrying men with spears and swords, not carrying cargo.

“These are ships for battle. Ships to battle other ships. Not by coming alongside and having their crews board each other. Not even by doing what Father Boniface tells me the ancient Rome-folk did, by ramming. No: by sinking the other ship and its crew along with it, and doing it from a distance. Now there's only one thing we know that can do that.

“You remember the pull-throwers I first made at Crowland that winter? What do you think of them?”

Brand shrugged. “Good against people. Wouldn't like to have one of those rocks fall into my ship. But as you know, you have to be the right distance to get a hit. Two ships, both moving…”

“Right, no chance. Now what of the twist-shooters we used against King Charles's lancers?”

“Might kill the crew, one man at a time. Couldn't sink a ship. The arrow they shoot would plug its own hole.”

“That leaves us with the last weapon, the one that Erkenbert the deacon made for Ivar. Guthmund used them to knock down the palisade at the camp above Hastings. The thing the Rome-folk called the onager—the wild ass. We call it the mule.”

At a signal deck-hands dragged tarred canvas away from a squat, square object mounted in the exact center of the nearest ship's undecked hull.

“What do you say to a hit from one of those?”

Brand shook his head slowly. He had seen the onagers shoot only once, and then from a distance, but he remembered seeing carts fly in pieces, whole files of oxen smashed to the ground. “No ship in the world could survive it. One hit, and the whole frame would go to pieces. But the reason you call it the mule is…”

“Because of the kick. Come and see what we've done.”

The men walked up the gangplank to stare at the new weapon close up. “See,” Shef explained. “These weigh a ton and a quarter. They have to. You see how it works? Stout rope down at the base, with two handles. You twist the rope both sides. It holds this bar”—he patted a five-foot beam standing upright, a heavy leather sling dangling from a peg at its top. “You force the bar down on to the deck, held by an iron clamp, and keep twisting. When it's at greatest strain you release the clamp. Bar shoots up with a rock in the sling, sling whirls round…”

“Bar hits the crosspiece.” Ordlaf patted a thick beam on a massive frame, padded both sides with heavy sandbags.

“The bar stops, the sling releases, the rock keeps going. It throws flat and hard, anything up to half a mile. But you see the problem. We have to build it heavy, to take the kick. We have to have it dead over the center-line, so we can fix the frame down on to the keel. And because it weighs so much, we have to have it centered fore and aft as well.”

“But that's where the mast should be,” objected Brand.

“So we had to move the mast. That's where Ordlaf showed us something.”

“You see, sir Brand,” Ordlaf explained, “where I come from we have boats like yours, double-ended and clinker-built and all. But because we're in it for fish, not for far voyaging, we rig them different. We step the mast forward of center, and we rake it forward too. And then, you can see, we cut the sail different. Not square, like yours, but on a slant.”

Brand grunted. “I know. So if you take your hands off the steering oar she turns head into wind and rides the waves. Fisherman's trick. Safe enough. But slow. Especially with all this weight to shift. How fast is she?”

Shef and Ordlaf exchanged glances. “Not fast at all,” Shef conceded. “Guthmund ran a trial against one of his boats before we put the mule in this one, and even without that weight, well—Guthmund sailed rings round her.

“But you see, Brand, we aren't trying to catch anyone! If we meet a fleet in the open sea, and they come to fight us, we'll sink them! If they sail away, the coastline has been defended. If they get past us, we'll follow and sink them wherever they go. This isn't a transport, Brand. It's a ship for battle.”

“A battleship,” added Ordlaf approvingly.

“Can you train it round?” asked Brand. “The mule, I mean. Can you point it different directions? You could with your dart-throwers.”

“We're working on it,” said Shef. “We tried putting the whole thing on a cartwheel, putting the cartwheel on an axle, and bedding the other end of the axle in a hole bored in the keel. But it was all too heavy to turn, and the kick kept breaking the axle. Udd has some idea of putting the whole thing on an iron ball, but… No. It will only shoot directly on the beam. But what we have done is fit two bars, two ropes, two sets of handles and so on, one either side. Only one crosspiece, naturally. But that means we can shoot to either beam.”

Brand shook his head again. As they stood he had been feeling the ship heave gently beneath him, even in the Thames backwater, trying to estimate how she would feel in the open sea. A ton and a quarter of weight, much of it high up so that the machine stood higher than the gunwales. Sail pressure way off center-line. A wide yard so they could spread plenty of sail, he noticed. But tricky to handle. He had no doubt the fisherman knew his business. And there was no question what a hit from one of those rocks would do. Remembering the fragile frame of every boat he had ever sailed, their planks not even nailed to the ribs, but lashed with sinew, Brand could see the whole construction springing apart in a moment, leaving an entire crew struggling in the sea. And not even Sigurth Snake-eye's own fifty champions could fight against that.

“What are you going to call her,” he asked suddenly. “For luck.” His hand shot automatically to the hammer pendant on his chest. Ordlaf copied his gesture, fishing from under his tunic the silver boat of Njörth.

“We've got ten of the battleships,” said Shef. “I wanted to call them after the gods of the Way, Thor, Frey, Rig, and so on, but Thorvin would not allow it. He said it would be bad luck if we had to say ‘Heimdall is aground,’ or ‘Thor is stuck on the sandbank.’ So we changed our minds. We decided to call each ship after one of the counties in my realm, and as far as we can we will crew her from that county. So this is the Norfolk, over there the Suffolk, the Lincoln, the Isle of Ely, the Buckingham, and all the others. What do you think?”

Brand hesitated. Like all sailors, he had deep respect for luck, and no wish to say the ill word that might bring down bad luck on the enterprise of his friend. “I think that once again you have brought a new thing to the world. It may be that your ‘Counties’ will sweep the seas. Certainly I would not care to encounter one, and men do not call me the timidest of the Norsemen. It may be that the kings of England will be the sea-kings in the future, and not the kings of the North.

“Tell me,” he went on, “where do you mean to make your first cruise?”

“Across to the Dutch shore,” said Shef. “Then up along the coast past the Frisian islands and into Danish waters. That is the main route the pirates come. We will sink every pirate ship we see. From then on any who wish to invade us must take the long sea-crossing from Denmark. But in the end we will destroy their bases, seek them out in their own home-ports.”

“The Frisian islands,” muttered Brand. “The mouths of the Rhine, the Ems, the Elbe, the Eider. Well, I will tell you one thing, young man. All that is pilot water. You understand what I mean? You will need a pilot who knows the channels and the landmarks, so he can find his way by smell and hearing if he needs to.”

Ordlaf looked stubborn. “I've found my way all my life with no more than lead, lookout and log-line. Nor do I feel my luck has got any the worse since I left the monks who were my masters and found the gods of the Way.”

Brand grunted. “I say nothing against the gods of the Way.” Again, both he and Ordlaf touched their protecting pendants, and this time Shef, with a self-conscious gesture, reached also to pull out his strange ladder-like charm, the token of his patron Rig. “No, the gods may be well enough. But as for lead, lookout and log-line—you'll need more than that off Bremen! I say it, I, Brand, Champion of the men of Halogaland.”

The listening workmen shifted and muttered. Some of those new to the yards nudged each other, pointing at the unfamiliar pendant of Rig.

Sun slanted through the high windows of the great library in the cathedral of Cologne, to fall on the open pages of several books spread across the massive lectern. Erkenbert the deacon, his short frame barely able to see its upper edges, stood lost in thought. He was alone. The librarius, knowing he had the archbishop's favor, and approving the intentness of his research, had left him to himself, even with the great and precious Bible, written on the skins of eighty calves.

Erkenbert was comparing texts. Could the fantastic tale that the archbishop Rimbert had told them days before possibly be true? It had convinced everyone else at the meeting, archbishops and counselors alike. But then it had flattered their pride, appealed to their sense of themselves as a nation, and as a nation continually rejected and undervalued by the power of Rome. Erkenbert did not share that feeling—or at least not yet. The English nation, remembering its conversion by the blessed Pope Gregory, had long boasted its loyalty to the Popes and to Rome. But what had Rome sent in return? If what Rimbert said was true, then maybe it was time to be loyal… elsewhere.

The texts, now. First among them was one that Erkenbert knew well, could have recited in his sleep. Nevertheless, important to look again. The four gospellers' accounts of the crucifixion of Christ all told slightly different tales—proof of their truth, of course, for who does not know that four men seeing the same thing will pick different parts of it to repeat? But John—John said more than the others. Turning the great, stiff pages, Erkenbert found the passage he wanted and read it, whispering the Latin words softly to himself and mentally translating them into his native English.

“…sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance.” With a lance, thought Erkenbert. With a Roman soldier's lance.

Erkenbert knew better than most men what Roman soldiers' weapons looked like. At what had once been his home at the great Minster of York, there had still remained standing much of what was formerly the headquarters building of the Sixth Legion of Eboracum. The legion had left York and Britain four hundred years before, called away to fight a civil war on mainland Europe, but much of its arsenal had remained behind, and much of what had not been stolen or used still lay in the vaults. The imperishable bronze fittings for the catapults Erkenbert had made for the heathen Ivar had been genuine old work, as good as the day they were made. Iron rusted, but for all that Erkenbert had seen on its stand, kept cleaned and polished as a trophy, the full panoply of a Roman legionary, helmet, cuirass, short-sword, greaves, shield and of course the iron-shafted Roman javelin, the pilum. Also called a lancea.

Yes, thought Erkenbert, that could have happened. And no question but that the lance, the Holy Lance, the lance that had pierced the side of the Son of God himself, could have survived physically. He had himself seen and handled weapons that might be as old.

But who might have thought to preserve such a thing? It would have had to be someone who recognized its importance at the very moment of its use. Otherwise the weapon would have gone back to the barracks, been mixed with a thousand others. Who could have set aside such a weapon? Not, thought Erkenbert, for all the archbishop had said, the pious Jew Joseph of Arimathea, whom John the gospeller mentioned four verses later. Such a man, if a disciple of Jesus, might well have been able to beg the body from Pilate, and to preserve the holy chalice in which Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper—though John said nothing of that. He would not have been able to gain possession of an infantry issue weapon from the Romans.

But the centurion, now. Erkenbert turned the pages of the Bible thoughtfully, moving from one Gospel account to the next. The centurion was mentioned in three out of four, and in all three he said almost the same words: Luke, “truly this was a righteous man,” Mark, “truly this man was the Son of God,” Matthew, “truly this was the Son of God.” And in the fourth, in John, might the writer not have meant the centurion by “one of the soldiers”? If the centurion pierced the side of Jesus, as was his duty, and had seen or felt the miracle—what easier than for him to keep and treasure his own lance?

Now where did the centurion go after the Crucifixion? Erkenbert turned to another book, small, shabby, untitled, a book it seemed of letters, one after another, prattling of land and loans and debts, written by many authors, the kind of thing many efficient librarii would have sent to be scraped and re-used. Erkenbert fixed on the one of which Rimbert had told him. It seemed plain enough. A letter from Roman times, written in Latin—not good Latin, Erkenbert noted with interest, the Latin of a man who knew only the words of command, and to whom grammar was a mystery—and said at the top to be from one Gaius Cassius Longinus, centurion of Legio XXX Victrix. Describing in admiring terms the crucifixion at Jerusalem of a troublemaker, and now sent to the centurion's home at—Erkenbert could not read the name, but certainly something German, Bingen or Zobingen maybe.

Erkenbert pulled at his lower lip. A forgery? The letter had clearly been copied several times, but that was natural over the centuries. If the copier had been concerned to stress its importance, would he have made such a shabby copy, with such inferior penmanship? As for the tale itself, Erkenbert had no doubt that a centurion in Jerusalem in the Year of Our Lord 33 might well have been from the Rhineland. Or from England for that matter. Had the great Constantine, who had made Christianity the religion of the Empire, not himself been proclaimed Emperor on the very site of Erkenbert's own Minster at York?

The critical text was the third, a modern work, written no more than thirty years before, or so Erkenbert judged from its style. It was an account of the life and the death of the great Emperor Charlemagne, whose degenerate descendants, in Archbishop Gunther's view, now incompetently ruled the West. Much of it was familiar to Erkenbert already—the Emperor's campaigns, his fostering of learning. As Erkenbert never for a moment forgot, Charlemagne had called Alcuin, another man of York, another humble deacon like himself, from the English minster to control the destiny and the scholarship of the whole of Europe. Alcuin had been a man of great learning, true. But in literature, not in the practical arts. He was not an arithmeticus, as Erkenbert was. There was nothing to say an arithmeticus might not be as great a man as a poet.

But in this Charlemagne chronicle there was something Erkenbert had indeed never heard, till Rimbert had told them all of it. Not how the Emperor died, for that was known, but the portents that announced it. Erkenbert shifted the book into full sunlight and read intently.

The emperor, aged seventy, was returning, it said, from his forty-seventh victorious campaign, against the Saxons, in full majesty and power. But then across the evening sky a comet had flashed. Cometa, thought Erkenbert. What we call the long-haired star. Long hair is the sign of the sacred king. That is why Charlemagne's ancestors had the kings they deposed shorn in public. The hairy star fell. And as it fell, the chronicle asserted, the emperor's horse shied and threw him. It threw him so violently that his sword-belt was torn off. And the lance he was carrying in his left hand flew from it and landed many yards away. At the same time, at the emperor's chapel in Aachen, the word “Princeps,” or “Prince,” had faded from an inscription the emperor had erected for himself, and never returned. The king had died weeks later, the chronicle said, insisting to the last that these portents did not mean that God had taken his authority from him. Yet of them all the greatest was the emperor's dropping of the lance, which previously he had carried everywhere with him—for that lance, the book insisted, was the beata lancea itself, the Lance of the German centurion Longinus, taken from its hiding-place in Cologne by Charlemagne in youth, and never leaving his side again in all his many campaigns and victories.

He who holds this Lance, the chronicle said, sways the destiny of the world. But no scholar knows where it is, for Charlemagne's counts diced for it after his death, and revealed only to each other who had been the winner.

And according to Rimbert no man knows now, thought Erkenbert, straightening up from his books. For by his account the Holy Lance was taken by Count Reginbald to Hamburg and treasured as a relic, inlaid with gold and precious stones. But since the heathens of the North sacked Hamburg twelve years ago, it has not been seen. Stolen away by some chieftain or kinglet. Destroyed maybe.

But no. For if it is the holy relic, God would guard it. And if it was made marvelous with gold and gems, even the heathen would respect it.

Does that mean that some petty chief among the church-despoilers shall be the overlord of Europe, the new Charlemagne? Remembering Ragnar Hairy-Breeks, whom he himself had put to the serpent-pit, and his sons, Ubbi, Halvdan, Ivar the Boneless and worst of all, the Snake-eye, Erkenbert felt his spine cringe in fear.

That could not be allowed. If the relic were in the hands of the heathen, it would have to be rescued, as Rimbert had urged so passionately. Rescued and transferred to the new emperor, whoever he might be, to unite Christendom once again. But what guarantee was there that this whole story, of lance and crucifixion and German centurion, was not just a fable? A forgery?

Leaving the books, Erkenbert strolled to the window and stared out at the peaceful spring scene. He had come to the library to check the documents, and check them he had. They seemed reliable. The story they told held together. Furthermore, he realized, it was a good story. He wanted to believe it. And he knew why he wanted to believe it.

All his life, Erkenbert reflected, he had been in the hands of bunglers. Incompetent archbishops like Wulfhere, incompetent kings like Ella and the fool Osbert before him, stupid thanes and illiterate priestlings, in their posts only because of some kinship with the great. England was a land where all his tools had been made of straw.

It was different here, in the land of the German Prince-Archbishops. Orders were carried out. Counselors were picked for their brains and their learning. Practical matters were attended to promptly, and those who understood them appreciated. Resources were far greater. Erkenbert knew that he had come to the great Gunther's attention simply because he had recognized the high quality of the Archbishop's silver currency, and asked how it was maintained. From the new mines, they had told him, in the Harz mountains. But a man who knows how to purify silver and separate out the lead is always welcome.

Yes, thought Erkenbert. He admired these people. He wanted them to accept him. But would they? He could sense their fierce pride in their own race and language, and knew that he was to that an outsider. He was short and dark as well, and knew how much they valued strength and the fair hair they thought a mark of their origin. Could his personal destiny ever be here? He needed a sign.

The rays of the sun had been moving all afternoon steadily westwards, across the lectern and the shelf of books beside it. As Erkenbert turned from the window it shone on an open page. Gold glittered from the massive illuminated capital on it, done with fantastic art in interlaced serpent-bodies, shining with silver and ruby patterns.

That is English art, thought Erkenbert. He looked again at the great Bible whose pages he had been turning, intent only on what they said, not on their art or origin. Certainly English work, and from Northumbria at that. Not York maybe, but Wearmouth or the scriptorium of the great Bede at Jarrow, from the time before the Vikings came. How did it get here?

How did Christianity get here? Hamburg and Bremen were pagan towns to Charlemagne. It was brought here by the English missionaries, by the men of my own blood, by the blessed Willibrord and Wynfrith and Willebald the breaker of idols. My ancestors brought them a great gift, Erkenbert told himself with a flush of pride. The Christian religion and the learning with which to understand it. If any check me with my foreignness, I will remind them of that.

Carefully, Erkenbert replaced the precious books on their shelves and let himself out. Arno, the archbishop's counselor, sat on a bench in the square outside. He rose as he saw the little deacon emerging.

“Well, brother? Are you satisfied?”

Erkenbert smiled with total confidence and enthusiasm. “Completely satisfied, brother Arno. You may be sure that the holy Rimbert has made his first convert of alien race. I bless the day he told me of this greatest of relics.”

Arno grinned down, momentary tension relieved. He had come to respect the little Englishman for his learning and his foresight. And after all—were the English not only some other kind of Saxon?

“Well, then, brother. Shall we be about God's work? The finding of the Holy Lance.”

“Yes,” said Erkenbert fervently. “And after that, brother, the work it was sent for. The finding of the true king, the emperor of New Rome in the West.”

Shef lay stretched on his back, drifting in and out of sleep. The fleet was due to sail next morning, and from all that Brand had said about the hardships of life at sea, it was important to sleep while one could. But it had been a trying evening. Shef had been obliged to host all his captains, the ten English skippers he had with difficulty found to command his “battleships,” and the forty or more Way-Vikings who skippered his conventional craft. It had needed much drinking of toasts, with both groups anxious not to be outdone.

Then, when he had got rid of them and hoped for a confidential talk with Brand, his convalescent friend had been in sour mood. He had refused to accompany Shef in the Norfolk, saying he preferred his own ship and crew. He had insisted that it was bad luck to sail with so many men in the fleet who did not know the haf-words, the elaborate taboo-language by which sailors avoided mentioning directly such unlucky things as women, cats or priests. Finding that dismissed even by Thorvin, who did intend to sail in the Norfolk, he had fallen back on telling depressing tales from his homeland, tales mostly of the unknown creatures of the sea, the mermaids and marbendills, men who had angered the skerry-elves and been turned into whales, eventually one of a scoffer and scorner whose boat had last been seen being drawn under water by a long arm covered in gray hair. At that, Shef had broken off the conversation. Now he lay, afraid of what his dreams would show him.

When the dream came, Shef knew immediately—for once—exactly where he was. He was in Asgarth, home of the gods, and moreover he was standing exactly outside the greatest of the halls of Asgarth, Valhalla, Othin's home of the heroes. In the distance, though still inside Asgarth, he could see a vast plain, with what looked like a confused battle taking place on it: a battle with no battle-lines, where every man struck everyone else, falling and bleeding at random.

As the day wore on, men fell and did not rise. The battle resolved itself into a string of duels between single men. The losers fell, the winners fought again. In the end only one man was left, hideously wounded, leaning on a great bloody axe. Shef heard a dim and distant cheering: Hermoth, Hermoth.

The dead began to rise, their severed limbs reuniting, the gashes in their sides healing up. They helped each other up, the men who had killed each other laughing and showing how things had gone. Slowly they formed into ranks and began to march back to the great hall, twelve abreast, a column thousands long, the figure with the great axe at their head. They marched round the building a few feet from Shef's unnoticed person, wheeled left and tramped without breaking their ranks or their stride through the double doors of the hall, now flung wide. The doors slammed. Light even in Asgarth began to fade. Sounds of revelry rose from inside.

Now up to the door came limping a poor man, roughly dressed. As Shef looked at him he knew that only in Asgarth could such a creature remain alive. His back was broken in two, so that his upper half lurched along seemingly without connection to his legs. His ribs were splayed wide, his middle crushed flat as if by the stamp of some mighty animal. Burst entrails projected from his coat.

He reached the gate of Valhalla and stared at it. A voice came from inside, one of the mighty voices Shef had often heard before: not the amused and cynical voice of his own patron—or maybe his own father—the god Rig, fomenter of skills and trickery. No, a cold and gravelly voice. This is the owner of the hall, thought Shef. This is Othin the mighty himself.

“Who sent you, mannikin?” said the voice.

Shef could not hear the low reply, but the voice could.

“Ah,” it said. “Well I know his mark. There will be a place for him here among my heroes. When the time comes.”

The crushed man spoke again, still inaudible.

“You?” said the mighty voice. “There is no place here for the likes of you. Who are you to stand in line against the Fenris-brood, when I have need of men? Away with you. Go round the back, to my kitchen-men. Maybe my chamberlain Thjalfi has need of another trencher-licker.”

The crushed man turned and hobbled away, round the building in the opposite direction to that from which the marching host had come. On his face, Shef saw as he passed, was an expression of such desolate despair as he hoped never to see again.

That is a man for whom even death has brought no peace, he thought. Are even the gods allowed to do such harm? What need is it that drives them to such evil?